Invisible flame
by SilentWriterGirlWithADream
Summary: "For the what the pain has burned away" Rated M for mature themes *Summary Update* Mai suddenly shows up in England and bumps into Naru. Why did she come? Why is she there? Mysteries surround her. Is she she friend or foe?
1. Chapter 1: Hello, Again

_**"The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye...until we meet again" - Jimi Hendricks**_

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**Chapter 1: Hello, Again**

I do not detest England. I do detest its tea though. I had better over _there._ I haven't been _there_ since three years ago. Though, Gene tells me, that _there_ we should go back. That he is better and that we need to go back. He has a bad feeling that if we do not go back something unspeakable horrible will happen.

At least that is what he used to say. Until, that day…

_Gene's frail body shaking his unsteady hands moving toward his face, broken animal like sounds began to burst from his mouth. Then, his hands dropped, and he fisted the hospital bed sheets and released them over and over again._

_ "Gene," I stated in my steady voice trying to get his attention on me. Gene, kept on trembling, and he began to shake his head. As if to silently communicate "Please no" because his voice wouldn't, couldn't make the sounds to say it out loud. _

_ "Gene!" I yelled this time. This wasn't good for his body, or for whatever happened. "Gene, please tell me." I begged. This wasn't good for his body at all. When Gene went there and got hit and drown his physic powers encased him, along with my PK, preserving his body, and keeping him in a death like state, that I would later call "fictus mort" or fake death. Fictus mort came with consequences though. For example, it required a lot of energy to maintain this state so his body robbed itself of nutrients, leaving Gene with severe injuries and a fragile body. Also, his body didn't age while he was in fictus mort so when he finally did come out of the trance his body began aging rapidly to keep up with mine. _

_Also, I didn't conclude he was in fictus mort until we were in England because the fictus mort lasted until, both of us felt we were in a "safe zone" or a place where we felt safe which, in this case was England. _

_He remembers everything that he did on the cases with SPR though. He remembers how he pretended to be me, and how he guided the whole group to him. He remembers _her_ and then he called me an "idiot scientist" for some reason or another. _

_"Noll," he whimpered, "It's too late, it already happened. If we were there we could have stopped it. We could of stopped all of it. But it's too late now. It's too late. It was so painful. Now it's over and we couldn't do anything."_

_"What? What happened? Show me please." I begged again. It must have been terrifying to have Gene acting like this._

_"No. It's all over," he began to shake his head again. _

_"What is?" Now I was getting annoyed, and frightened. The great Oliver Davis frightened. I felt like snorting._

_"The horrible things are all over," the voice that came out of his was neither petrified with fear nor shaking with sorrow. It was a monotone, and that invoked more terror in me than anything else. _

It had been a year and a half since that day. Gene's smile seems to be a little less real now. Through a bond a feel a great sense of misplacement, of grief. When I asked Gene about it, later on, he said…

_"I don't know all I had was a really bad feeling, not even a feeling more like an absolute fact?" he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, "And now it feels like I have to grieve for what has been lost, for what the pain has burned away, for what never got to blossom. But, I don't know what it is or who it is. All I know that something bad happened and that I _need _to feel sadness, because the loss to me was so huge that nothing can replace it. I feel so… guilty. I know it was something huge in my life yet I don't know what it is. " He gave a half smile with none of his usual warmth._

I don't know what he was talking about , but it seemed so personal that I had to leave him alone without wanting to, there is always that wall between him and me now. I have a feeling though that if I tried hard that I would understand it, that I would feel it too. I was afraid to though, l lost Gene once. I don't want feel that again, especially if there is no reason to.

It has been a two years since then and now I walk us down the old streets of London. Its cracked, and uneven sidewalks are hard to wheel Gene as we head for the car. Right before Lin, puts Gene into the car, and I fold up his wheelchair. Then, a young woman trips over the sidewalk and spills her ice tea on me.

"I'm sorry! I am so sorry! I am so clumsy! Oh you probably don't understand me because I am speaking Japanese in England, Ugh. I am so sorry," the familiar voice rushes to make excuses.

As I looked down, her warm brown eyes met mine became huge .Her pink lips and cheeks were flushed with cold, which turned her nose a beautiful shade of red like a rose. Her brown hair, which was much longer now, trails behind her in silky waves.

"Naru," she gasps. Then, she takes a minute to get over the shock of seeing me, takes a deep breath and composes herself and then says in heavily accented English:

"Hello."

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_**"I can't set my hopes too high,/'Cause every hello ends with a goodbye." **_

_**-Demi Lovato**_

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_**Disclaimer: I do not own any recognizable characters in ghost hunt **_

_**A/N: So what do you think? Does the whole Fictus Mort stuff make sense? I am looking for a beta so if someone wants to beta for me just PM me. Reviews make me happy. **_


	2. Chapter 2: Cruelty

**A/N: Okay so this chapter is in third person. The story is a little too complex to only stay at Naru's POV all the other chapters from now on is third person.**

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**Chapter 2: Cruelty **

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**"****_You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole-like the world, or the person you loved."  
― Stewart O'Nan_**

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Lin and Gene look out their respective windows to find a mid-height brunette talking to the youngest and the most stoic of their group. (Yes, even Lin admits that ever since they came back from Japan. The younger of the Davis brothers is more stoic than he is. Madoka, didn't even think it was possible.)

"Mai?" Gene gasps.

Hearing the older Davis brother calling her, the young brunette turned her to them. She reveled two eyes that were a mixture of gold and earth. Her lips were of two sakura petals that one that fell down while the other, as if taken by a warm spring breeze, moved up creating a perfect "O" shape. Her hair played with the snowflakes in the wind.

"Gene?" she splutters, widening her eyes as if to reveal a secret gold mine in the depths of her eyes. There is a moment just a moment where all eyes are on the girl called Mai Taniyama, and Mai Taniyama's eyes are on supposedly dead Davis twin.

Gene smiles like a thousand of butterflies have been release into the world and he had witness the beauty himself, the look of awe and merely appreciating the beauty.

"Gene, h-how are you alive?" the young women stumbles on her words as if they are supposes to perform an elegant ballet, yet had a sudden case of stage fright and began to tumble and trip all over each other instead. A mix of emotions flashes across her face from, fear and anger to happiness and relief, yet they are mixed together so well that they are more of a homogenous mixture, that the Davis twins or Lin cannot decipher.

"Long story," the eldest Davis twin stated with a bit of a half mooned smirk. "Why are you here, Mai?"

"Long story," Mai said with an eclipsing smile.

Oliver clears his throat. The valley of annoyance and concern between his eyebrows is obvious and his irritation of the moment between his brother and Mai is obvious yet, his scientific mind chooses to ignore it. "Where is the place you are staying, Mai?" the Narsstic inquires.

"Umm… I do not have a place to stay," she mutters, and finds herself blushing.

"Why?" the genesis asks, suspicion rises up like a balloon with too much helium, it expands until, it pops. This was _Mai_ after all, the same teenage girl who used to make him tea and come late to work, she stills can't walk in a straight line to save her life. What is there to suspicious about? _She bumped into him at random and found him on probably the first day she is London without a place to stay. _The inner grief that he could never understand and never felt pulls at him as if begging him to understand it and embrace it.

He pushes it away like one of those annoying female college students, instantly rejecting them.

"You have to stay with us Mai! It could be like a sleepover!" Gene says excitedly. His eyes sparkle, more that Oliver has ever seen in the past few years. His smile is full of hope that Oliver could not bear to deny him. Mai looks at Naru her gaze steady as if she almost _expects_ him to say no, to her _expects_ him to force her to brave the cold London streets. The grief that that he is repressing screams at him telling her to stay that this chose will change him for the of his life, that there are two predestined paths that he can take, and that he must choose now.

So he chose.

He turns to Mai and speaks one word to her:

"Fine"

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Mai gets into the van. It is as black as a coal and the ignition she could only smell the burned flues creating an invisible flame. _It's time now isn't, Flame? _ She thinks to herself as she closes the heavy door before she looks at the snow into the ground and wonders if Flame knows about Gene. If Flame is watching over her now, or if Flame is taking a more proactive route, and she'll see Flame in her dreams.

For it was no coincidence that Mai had bumped into Naru.

_Flame are you watching me?_

_ Are you angry? Happy?_

_ Disappointed?_

Mai's inner conflict was put on hold as Gene, who is sitting right next to her, begins to interrogate her.

"So Mai, why are you here?" Gene asks with a smile that half moon smile on his face. She returns the smile with a fake, but convincing smile, of her own.

She looks out the window, and for the briefest of brief moments Gene could see an emotion, that he had never quite seen in Mai's eyes. _Longing? Determination? Loneliness? Sadness? A Combination?_ Gene didn't quite know what it was, but his feeling of grief said that he would know.

"A promise," she says.

"Anything else?" inquires Naru.

Mai, looks steadily at him with a look of determination and strangely enough repulsion. Her gold mine eyes burn straight into the corner of his eyes, which contains his frigid irises and pupils that vacuums hopes, as he turns around to look at her.

_Flame give me strength_, the young medium asks as she plays with the tips of her long hair.

"I have some unfinished business," she answers her voice strong as the steel rods that comprise her determination, and her soul.

"Is that so?" Oliver asks .

"Yes," and then turns her head, with force that her hair seeming come to life spreading like beams of sun at first light, then it falls like the snow outside, to the majestic and ancient scenery of London.

The city that has not forgotten its roots and ancient tales of Kings and Queens; of Princes and Princess; of murder and love. The city knows not of amnesia only of its fantastic rondos and plays. For, in Mai's eyes, every pebble had a thousand stories, and if the walls of the gothic buildings could talk, they would tell the most epic tales, that not even the greatest story tellers could give justice to.

She smiles to herself thinking that her story would be entwined into the cobble stones and engraved forever in her memory, and maybe even Flame's story would entangled with hers. Yes, for as long as a shadow of her existed so would Flame.

"Mai! Mai! We're here! Come on!" Gene yells in her ear, while making large hand gestures forcing her to see past an iron gate.

What she sees takes her breath away. The mansion did not have the memories that most its friends had. No, the mansion was a babe on the block. Yet, its beauty looks is just sophisticated as the others, with its marble pillars standing with as much pride its youngest master. It whiteness does not give his coldness though, it gives a warmth reminds her of the stars that belongs to the summer night sky. The snow frosts the house as if it is a wedding cake, only needing the bride and groom at the top. There was a purity of the house is something that one could not describe in word. It is swathed in white and veiled in the lightest of yellow shutters and drapes. For a time, she imagines, it probably concealed a family in mourning and all the secrets it contains.

Now it must keep all of Mai secrets as well.

It must hid Mai cruelty.

For if there was one thing Mai has learned these past few years it was cruelty.

Mai is, after all, a very cruel person.

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**_"People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel."  
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky _**

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**A/N: What do you think happened to Mai?  
Who do you think Flame is?  
What do think the horrible incident is?**

**Whose promise does Mai have to keep?**

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**A/N: Thank you to ….**

**Kagome Pureheart, Krissy2lip, Celestial Star12, Celestial Star12, Iloveanimex, borntoflyhigh, AmberWolf1049 **

**For reviewing**

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**A/N: So what do you think? Predictions? Comments? Reviews make me happy.**

**I am looking for a beta anyone who wants to beta for me PM me.**


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